I don’t think Johnny Mac and Pitbull Palin have a clue as to the origin of the word Maverick.
“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.
In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.
Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.
This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.
Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.
Nope, not a clue.
I knew about the no-branding cattle guy, but not the rest of the family history.
Coining ‘maverick’ and ‘gobbelygook’ is fine work for one lineage.
McCain is a maverick by his definition.
Thinkprogress lists two examples:
McCain proposes a housing policy to buy back bad mortgages but wants to reward the bankers who made the bad loans
McCain Lobbies For Taiwan Arms Sales After Taiwan signs Lobbying Contract with His Adviser’s Firm
You just can’t make that up
Yeah, yeah, Karel loves to rant and rave and make a big issue out of just about everything, and he has been ranting and raving about this as if it were somehow a significant issue. OK, it’s really interesting in a historical sense, and nice to know about but it of what possible significance is it in terms of the campaign?
And by the way, McCain is applying the term to himself in the currently understood sense of someone who does not follow the pack. So, where’s the beef?
Here is the link to the better article at HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-karel-bouley/mccainpalin-no-mavericks_b_132664.html
As for ranting? Each time that the Palins and the McCains wrap themselves in the flag and preach Christian morality and the rest of the garbage is another shovel of dirt on the Republican brand. Every lie they make. Every song or recipe they steal. Every heritage they tarnish. Every single pill they pop. Dirt.
Shovels of dirt… burying the Grand Old Party in the midden heap with gnawed bones and broken promises and used cat litter.
Is it fair to pile on with a story about McCain’s defamation of a fine old liberal family? Yes. The sooner we bury the dead, and turn the Republicans into compost, the sooner we can concentrate upon the living.
But McCain is NOT defaming the Maverick family. The term maverick has long since been separated from that family for decades, and never had anything to do with its political and social history. It has for decades been understood to simply mean either an unbranded calf, or an individual who is not part of the herd, or does not follow the pack – someone who dissents. Furthermore, the maverick thing did not begin with this election. People have called McCain a maverick for many years, and, to the best of my knowledge he did not choose that term for himself.
Really, this is such a non-issue. As I said, interesting, but not something to get all up in arms about by any means.
Just realized the Karel reference might seem like a non sequitur. I was referring to Karel who wrote an article about this for the Huffington Post, and who is a very popular talk show host on KGO radio.
I guess I should have at least looked at the source article before jumping in, huh?